


Unsinkable

by Lady_Ganesh



Category: Titanic
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Yuletide, gen - Freeform, historical RPF - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-03 13:51:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Ganesh/pseuds/Lady_Ganesh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after the Titanic disaster, Molly Brown meets a familiar face. Written for Claudia in Yuletide 2008.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unsinkable

In the chaos afterward, she looked for familiar faces and saw few. Later, she had the lists; the passengers, the survivors, the long, horrible list of dead.

So many of her friends; so many young men and women; so many that the numbers overwhelmed her. Miss Rose DeWitt was dead, and Mrs. Margaret Brown could not even remember the surname of her young man-- not the one she was engaged to, he didn't matter-- Jack, the one from steerage, with the eager face and the energy.

Keeping busy was the only thing to do. What else could you do, after such a tragedy?

They called her a hero. That was something. She was no hero, but it gave her a voice. She would have testified, but the same brilliant male minds that built an 'unsinkable' ship that dropped like a stone decided a woman's voice would not be welcome. That bastard Hitchins got his own, she'd heard later; no respectable firm would hire him, and his wife and family left him. Still; she'd wanted to be there. She'd wanted to stand up, before the officers, and tell them exactly what that man had done, exactly how beastly his behavior-- so many men's behavior-- had been.

Instead, she wrote. She knew people. She was, after all this time-- and a not inconsiderable amount of work-- a member of Society, and had a fortune of gold behind her. Her anger, her frustration, her helplessness; they flowed through her, channeled through her pen into something better, into something that might do some good.

She would wake up in the night thinking of white faces sinking under water; of the children crying; of the terrible, terrible cold.

And she would think of Rose. Delicate, but delicate like a tree branch or a flower petal; deceptively strong, spirited, bright. She had seen a bit of her younger self in her bright eyes; perhaps, even, a chance for the girl to escape the mistakes Margaret herself had made in her own marriage, when she'd wed the wrong man far too young. She guessed that Cal Hockley would not be as understanding and sensible as her J.J. had been. She could have made different choices; her sweet Jack might have....

Ah, but it didn't matter. What mattered were the Roses and Jacks of the future, young men and women who deserved better lives than the restraints that had been placed on them.

She traveled; she wrote; she fought. She shamed the Rockefellers into offering their miners a better life. She rented a home in Newport and looked every morning at the sea that had taken so many lives; that would, she realized, take so many more. The sea was beautiful, and terrible, and cruel. People should be better than that. People _could_ be better than that.

And then came the War, and everything else seemed to pale in contrast. She went across the Atlantic again, to France, and they called her a hero again.

After J.J. died, another life called to her. She set her foot on the stage.

Theater was something entirely new, and entirely wonderful, another, different life. Stepping onto the boards was thrilling in a way nothing else in her life had been. She stood tall, and proud, and one night in New York she saw a face in the audience that took her breath away.

It couldn't be her; she was gone, had been gone since nineteen-twelve. That beautiful girl could not be, _could not_ be the lovely woman in row thirteen; it was impossible, improbable.

And yet. She had the look, the look she'd seen in the faces of all the other survivors. She was too young, still, to be haunted so. She was....

Mrs. Margaret Brown often signed autographs or spoke with the public after a show, so it was not unusual to see her outside the theater after the performance. What was unusual was her anxious face, her eyes scanning the crowd with far more urgency than her colleagues were used to.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Miss Carter told her.

"I feel like I have," she exclaimed, and Miss Carter looked at her strangely for a moment.

And then the face appeared again, and she took Miss Carter's arm tightly. "Her. There. Bring her over here; she looks familiar."

Her urgency must have been obvious; Miss Carter nodded, and disappeared into the crowd. "Thank you," she called out, but she didn't know if the girl heard her.

But it didn't matter; Miss Carter obeyed, and brought the girl, round and soft and pretty as she had always been, with her strength showing more clearly now she had aged, her wisdom and humor still strong in her eyes.

She was alive. And the list had shown....

She had escaped. _What a girl,_ Mrs. Brown thought in admiration. _What a woman!_

"Mrs. Brown would very much like to see you," Miss Carter was saying. "She thinks you might be acquainted."

Rose looked beautiful, and strong, and only a little frightened. "I'm sure we're not," she said. "I would certainly know if I'd met the famous Mrs. Brown. I'm certainly flattered but...."

"Ah," Mrs. Brown said, making sure Rose caught her eye. "I'm afraid you're correct. The resemblance is quite strong to a girl I used to know. She was a pistol, that girl. Headstrong and smart as a whip."

Rose looked down, embarrassed and relieved. "I'm flattered, Mrs. Brown, and it's an honor to meet you." She extended her lovely hand. "I'm Rose. Rose Dawson. I've done some acting myself, so it was a true pleasure to see you onstage."

"Well, thank you." She took Rose's hand and shook it, hard, like a man. Was Rose blushing? Was her own face heating up? "The pleasure is always mine," she said. "I feel so fortunate to be part of this production."

"They're fortunate to have you," Rose said. "Truly."

Something passed between them then; Mrs. Brown would live another decade and still never put a name to it. An understanding, certainly, but something deeper and sweeter than that, as well.

When Mrs. Brown slept that night, she was back on the Titanic, but there was no screaming, no nightmare, no iceberg; just Rose, her lovely curves and lovelier smile, just silk and candles and a tightly shut door.

When she woke in the morning, she felt deliciously, delightfully, warm.


End file.
